Trump calls out Bank of America, Chase for debanking conservatives. Are they?

Donald Trump:

“What you’re doing is wrong.”

Simone Del Rosario:

Bank of America’s CEO wasn’t expecting that.

Brian Moynihan asked President Donald Trump about how he plans to sustain economic growth during a Q&A portion at the World Economic Forum.

Trump took the opportunity to bring conservatives’ claims of debanking to the CEOs of the world’s largest banks. It’s an accusation the banks have repeatedly denied.

Donald Trump:

“Speakig of you, you’ve done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America, this conservative they don’t take conservative business. And I don’t know if the regular mandate of that because of Biden or what but you and Jamie and everybody I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.”

Simone Del Rosario:

The Jamie in question is of course JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. He was not part of the panel. For his part, Moynihan didn’t react to Trump’s claims, but he did deflect.

BRIAN MOYNIHAN:

Mr. President, I’ll say that your friend Gianni said hello, told me tell you hello and we look forward to sponsoring the World Cup when it comes both this summer for the club and next year so thank you for getting that for the United States.

Simone Del Rosario:

In a statement to Straight Arrow News, Bank of America says political ideology has no bearing on its customer decisions.

“We serve more than 70 million clients and we welcome conservatives. We are required to follow extensive government rules and regulations that sometimes result in decisions to exit client relationships. We never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test,” B of A told SAN in an email.

Conservatives claim big banks have debanked them for years. And the allegations gained widespread attention after billionaire engineer and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen talked about it on the “Joe Rogan Experience.”

Marc Andreessen:

This is where the government and the companies get intertwined. Back to your fascism point, which is there’s no there’s a constitutional amendment that says the government can’t restrict your speech, but there’s no kind constitutional amendment that says the government can’t de bank you, right? And so they, if they can’t do the one thing, they do the other thing, and then they don’t have to debank you. They just have to put pressure on the private company banks to do it. And then the private company banks do it because they’re expected to, but the government gets to say, we didn’t do it. It was the private company that did it. And of course, JP Morgan can decide who they want to have as customers.
{TC: 1:36:32 – 1:36:55}
And so a lot of this started about 15 years ago with this thing called Operation choke point, where they decided to as marijuana started to become legal, as prostitution started to become legal, and then guns, which there’s always a fight about under the Obama administration, they started to de bank, legal marijuana businesses, escort businesses, and then, and then, and then gun shops, just like your gun manufacturers, and just like you’re done, you’re out of the banking system.

Simone Del Rosario:

And that got Dimon’s attention. He talked about how he reacted to that interview during an episode of Chase’s “The Unshakeables” podcast earlier this week.

Jamie Dimon:

I called Mark Andreessen after that. He’s a friend of mine. I want to explain to him we have not de banked anyone because of political or religious relationships, period. Now, when we de bank someone, they often blame that reason, but that’s not a reason. We don’t bank marijuana companies because there’s no federal law around it. We simply can’t follow the law. If there’s a federal law, we probably would, and we do bank some crypto companies, and very carefully, we are responsible in the law to fight sex trafficking, money laundering, tax avoidance. It’s the Bank Secrecy Act, Right Bank Secrecy Act, and we have to follow that.

Simone Del Rosario:

Like we said, the claims have been around for years. Some in the banking industry say Trump’s attention to the issue may lead to regulatory changes.

Republicans have accused big big banks of de-banking gunmakers and fossil fuel companies. And here’s some background on where that comes from.

Back in 2018, Bank of America did institute a rule to stop lending money to gun manufactures that make “military style weapons.” In December 2023, that rule was clarified to say these clients and transactions “must go through an enhanced due diligence process and be escalated to the senior-most risk review body.”

Citigroup also instituted a policy in 2018 that required its business customers to stop selling firearms to people who hadn’t passed background checks or are younger than 21. They also stopped clients from selling bump stocks and high capacity magazines.

On the environmental front, activist groups have called for banks to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry for years. But dozens of the world’s largest banks are still circulating loans totaling more than $700 billion for the industry as recently as 2023.

Meanwhile, earlier in January, the nation’s six largest banks left the United Nations-sponsored Net Zero Banking Alliance.

For SAN, I’m SDR.